French in Mexico...?

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Getting ready for 8:30 this morning was a teeny bit difficult, especially when we didn't get to bed until 1:30 last night. Walking downstairs we awaited the rest of the group and then all of us climbed onto the bus. Our first stop was to the public university in Puebla; it's a huge campus with gorgeous architecture and amazing pieces of artwork hung around campus.

Naturally, everyone in the group was hungry by the time we got to the university so thank goodness our professors had arranged for us to eat first! We ate at this cute little french bistro that is situated right near the front entrance of the university. I will admit, it was extremely odd to be eating at a french restaurant while in Mexico, but no one was complaining because it looked so good!

Our breakfast started off with the infamous basket of sweet bread that seems to accompany every breakfast. One of the girls I was sitting with was doing her 501 research paper on bread so obviously we split the bread into pieces so that we could all try a little bit of each; it was in the name of research 😉 We ordered our drinks and food, which caused a little confusion since the names of everything was in french -however, the descriptions were in spanish so we at least knew what was in each dish, and enjoyed every bite!

After breakfast we walked through the university taking in all the gorgeous sights it had to offer. Our last stop was the university's book store, and oh my gosh, I was in heaven there! I bought two books, one was a nahuatl-spanish dictionary and the other was a nahuatl-spanish poem book. I think it would be so cool to learn nahuatl and what better way to begin than to read!

Next we went to visit two churches each more exquisite than the last. Both churches were heavily decorated with saints and angels. The first church was covered in gold, on top of everything else, and the second church had bundles of flowers everywhere. It was overwhelming yet breathtaking at the same time.

One of the girls in our group and I decided we wanted to go out into the town to explore a little bit. As soon as we walked out of the front yard of the church we were drawn to the vendors that lined part of the street. The vendors were selling some pretty neat things, and I settled on this aztec piece of artwork.

Once we were joined by the rest of the group, our professors beckoned us to this vendor who was selling the foam from the chocolate drink, that's right, just the foam, not the chocolate drink. For anyone who does not know, foam is a huge deal, and it really showed as a cup of this foam was being sold for 50 pesos each! I didn't buy any, rather, I enjoyed the sight of the giant vat of chocolate foam.

We all piled onto the bus yet again and this time made our way to the private university to see how it compared with the public university. The public university reminded me a lot like UAG in Guadalajara. In order to even get in we had to check in with the security officers and tell them we had a reservation. Yes, a reservation to get in to a university for a visit. They don't play around here.

The private university was similar to the public one, only more security guards and more soccer fields.

Cafeteria food from a university in Mexico is the same as a university in Canada; good, but nothing over-the-top amazing. We ate lunch and then made our way back onto the bus. I swear, half of our trip takes place on this bus! haha.

Trekking along we made it to this smaller town called Cholula; a very quaint little town with gorgeous buildings -most of them being churches. The part of town we visited was located on top of a hill and had a huge market set up in front of the church.

The church that sat behind the market was incredible; there was a mass going on as we were walking by so we couldn't exactly go in and walk around. There was another section of the church around back where people would go to give gifts to San Miguel to pray for a miracle -as the church was for San Miguel who is the saint of miracles.

There was something about this church that held such power, no words can describe it -it was one of those experiences that neither words, nor photographs could even begin to explain.

After a moving afternoon in Cholula, we returned back to the hotel to have some down time before having the option to go out again. My roommate and I decided to chill and get some homework done before we did anything else. Later on, we decided to go to this club called Tumbao; we gathered up a good handful of people and off we went to dance! At first there was no one in the place, and we thought it was going to be a repeat of the first night we went out together. *I forgot to write about it but it happened on July 2, and we celebrated one of the girls' birthdays! We were one of the only groups in the place and were the only group dancing.* After a little while the place filled up slowly, not too crowded though. All in all, we had a great time dancing the night away!

We got home around 1 but I didn't fall asleep until almost 2. Tomorrow is going to be a long one!

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